Satire: ISIS First Sgt: Recruits Ain’t What They Used to Be

The ISIS First Sergeant spat into the sand. “These new suicide bomber Western recruits just ain’t what they used to be. Shoot, I quit al Qaeda for ISIS just to get away from this amateur crap and here I am stepping in it again for ISIS.”

“Once upon a time,” said the grizzled veteran who will be played by Clint Eastwood if we can afford him in the movie version of this article, “you got some good people signing up for the suicide corps. Sure, they arrived at training here as pasty kids from the American suburbs, but they trained up right and blew up real nice. Made me proud. Now, look at this pack of maggots I’ve got to work with. Can’t even remember to wear their reflective safety belt over the damn dynamite-packed suicide vest.”

“After we put an ad on Craigslist specifically asking for Americans to join jihad as suicide bombers, I got like 4,000 emails overnight. Every one said the kid had just graduated with an English degree, had massive student loans and was willing to do anything as a start. Fair enough, but then the little twerps started asking about benefits and ‘work-life balance.’ Work-life balance, are you freaking kidding me? It says ‘suicide bomber’ right in the job description. Give me a break. I gotta admit though, when I mention the 72 virgins waiting for you in heaven after only one week at work, they do perk up. Does Google offer that?”

Still, the sergeant admitted, his challenges with the new recruits are hard to overcome.

“They do complain about everything. Until about three months ago, nobody ever asked me for whatever the hell sriracha sauce is to add to the rotten goat meat we serve. But yeah, our pita bread is gluten free, mainly because we have to make it out of sawdust since the American sanctions cut off most wheat imports. But the hilarious one is always ‘where can I charge my cell phone?’ Don’t these bozos even watch the news? Cell phones attract drones like rotten goat meat attracts flies, which, by the way, are another featured menu item here.”

But the worst is yet to come for the sergeant.

“I have a huge wash-out rate. And our basic training is only like four days long. Day One we practice writing wills, and they do OK. Day Two is when they sign over all their assets and as much of their parents’ money as they can. Again, no problem, as that’s just like the student loans they are familiar with. Day Three, the guys spend ten hours pushing the one button on our new model practice suicide vests over and over. A bunch fail at that, claiming in four years of college they never had to do any ‘manual labor.’ I tell them it’s like a video game controller, and that helps a few. The last day is the big wash-out. As a final exam the recruits have to swing across some monkey bars and jump through a ring of fire in black pajamas.”

“I personally think our modern, hi-tech suicide corps is past that kind of thing, but the mullahs love it, and we somehow always end up featuring it in the recruitment videos your American media plays over and over again for us. I can’t tell you how many times in the NCO mess I hear ‘well if it was good enough for us in the Taliban in the old days, it’s good enough for these kids now.'”

“You wanna know how hard this job really is? My most motivated class of recruits all turned out to be CIA agents, and I had to behead each one myself after some supply clerk ganked up the curved knife requisition order. And then when I finally do train some kid into a spit-shined suicide bomber, he’s never around long enough to mentor the next group. See how it sucks to be me?”

A spokesperson for the U.S. Air Force involved in the training of Americans to kill Muslims by remote control using drones described the scene above as “barbaric.”

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Peter Van Buren writes about current events at his blog. His book, Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99Percent, is available now from Amazon.

Satire: ISIS First Sgt: Recruits Ain’t What They Used to Be

The ISIS First Sergeant spat into the sand. “These new suicide bomber Western recruits just ain’t what they used to be. Shoot, I quit al Qaeda for ISIS just to get away from this amateur crap and here I am stepping in it again for ISIS.”

“Once upon a time,” said the grizzled veteran who will be played by Clint Eastwood if we can afford him in the movie version of this article, “you got some good people signing up for the suicide corps. Sure, they arrived at training here as pasty kids from the American suburbs, but they trained up right and blew up real nice. Made me proud. Now, look at this pack of maggots I’ve got to work with. Can’t even remember to wear their reflective safety belt over the damn dynamite-packed suicide vest.”

“After we put an ad on Craigslist specifically asking for Americans to join jihad as suicide bombers, I got like 4,000 emails overnight. Every one said the kid had just graduated with an English degree, had massive student loans and was willing to do anything as a start. Fair enough, but then the little twerps started asking about benefits and ‘work-life balance.’ Work-life balance, are you freaking kidding me? It says ‘suicide bomber’ right in the job description. Give me a break. I gotta admit though, when I mention the 72 virgins waiting for you in heaven after only one week at work, they do perk up. Does Google offer that?”

Still, the sergeant admitted, his challenges with the new recruits are hard to overcome.

“They do complain about everything. Until about three months ago, nobody ever asked me for whatever the hell sriracha sauce is to add to the rotten goat meat we serve. But yeah, our pita bread is gluten free, mainly because we have to make it out of sawdust since the American sanctions cut off most wheat imports. But the hilarious one is always ‘where can I charge my cell phone?’ Don’t these bozos even watch the news? Cell phones attract drones like rotten goat meat attracts flies, which, by the way, are another featured menu item here.”

But the worst is yet to come for the sergeant.

“I have a huge wash-out rate. And our basic training is only like four days long. Day One we practice writing wills, and they do OK. Day Two is when they sign over all their assets and as much of their parents’ money as they can. Again, no problem, as that’s just like the student loans they are familiar with. Day Three, the guys spend ten hours pushing the one button on our new model practice suicide vests over and over. A bunch fail at that, claiming in four years of college they never had to do any ‘manual labor.’ I tell them it’s like a video game controller, and that helps a few. The last day is the big wash-out. As a final exam the recruits have to swing across some monkey bars and jump through a ring of fire in black pajamas.”

Peter Van Buren

Peter Van Buren has served with the Foreign Service for over 23 years. He received a Meritorious Honor Award for assistance to Americans following the Hanshin earthquake in Kobe, a Superior Honor Award for helping an American rape victim in Japan, and another award for work in the tsunami relief efforts in Thailand. Previous assignments include Taiwan, Japan, Korea, the UK and Hong Kong. He volunteered for Iraq service and was assigned to ePRT duty 2009-10. His tour extended past the withdrawal of the last combat troops.

Van Buren worked extensively with the military while overseeing evacuation planning in Japan and Korea. This experience included multiple field exercises, plus civil-military work in Seoul, Tokyo, Hawaii, and Sydney with allies from the UK, Australia, and elsewhere. The Marine Corps selected Van Buren to travel to Camp Lejeune in 2006 to participate in a field exercise that included simulated Iraqi conditions. Van Buren spent a year on the Hill in the Department of State’s Congressional Liaison Office.

Van Buren speaks Japanese, Chinese Mandarin, and some Korean (the book’s all in English, don’t worry). Born in New York City, he lives in Virginia with his spouse, two daughters, and a docile Rottweiler.

Though this is his first book, Peter’s commentary has been featured on TomDispatch, Salon, Huffington Post, The Nation, American Conservative Magazine, Mother Jones, Michael Moore.com, Le Monde, Daily Kos, Middle East Online, Guernica and others.